he was not sent for by the queen. Meantime he had been, in 1862, chairman of the royal commission for the exhibition of that year, and in 1865 was appointed lard warden of the Cinque ports. In December 1868 he accepted the office of secretary of state for the colonies in Mr. Gladstone's first administration. His policy was the then accepted liberal policy. He withdrew the imperial troops from several foreign stations, especially in New Zealand and in Canada, leaving to the colonists themselves the task of providing for their own security, and his circular in reply to the proposal for a colonial conference in 1869 was discouraging to the colonies. Still, when Earl Russell moved for a commission on colonial policy (20 June 1870; see Hansard, Parl. Debates, ccii. 451) — a hostile motion — he defended himself successfully, and the motion was withdrawn. He was in office at the time of the transfer of the territory of the Hudson's Bay Company to Canada, and of the Red River revolt and consequent expedition under Colonel Wolseley. As leader of the House of Lords he was very successful in carrying the Irish Church and Land Bills of the government through a hostile assembly, he was no orator, and inspired no enthusiasm; but he was an excellent man of business, practical and tactful, lucid in exposition and inperturbably good-humoured. The compromise negotiated in July 1869 by the Archbishop Tait, was on the verge of open rupture with the House of Commons on the Irish Church Bill, largely owed its to his conciliatory demeanour, and Earl Cairns's courageous good sense in accepting the responsibilily of a settlement (see Davidson, Life of Archbishop Tait, 1891, ii. 40). On the death of Lord Clarendon, on 27 June 1870, Granville was transferred to the foreign office, and straightway announced, on the authority of Edmund, afterwards lord Hammond [q.v.], the permanent under-secretary for foreign affairs, that not a cloud obscured the prospect of peace. A fortnight later France and Prussia were at war. Granville's task was most difficult.
He had to preserve the neutrality of Great Britain, which was formally declared on 19 July, to secure the inviolability of Belgium, to offer mediation, which Pruasia would not accept, to soothe the the French resentment at the sympathy which the English people generally extended to the Prussians, and to respond,to Count Bernstorff's protests against the alleged export of horses, arms, and coals from England to France. With regard to Belgium, Granville look an opportunity, on 10 Aug., of correcting, by an outspohen declaration in the House of Lords, the uncertainty caused by Mr. Gladstone's ambiguous delivery in the commons on 8 Aug. (Hansard, Parl. Debates, cciii. 1702, 1754), and he succeeded in obtaining the assent of Prussia and France to new treaties for the maintenance of the quintuple arrangement for the neutrality of Belgium arrived at in 1839. When the French government of national defence requestod the mediation of England, Granville's hands went tied by the fact that Prussia desired no mediation, and that already English feeling was so far in favour of Prussia that his cautious neutrality was misrepresented alike in England and in Germany. He, however, endeavoured to arrange an armistice and instructed the members of the English embassy to extend all possible assistance to refugees. Meanwhile in October 1870 Russia repudiated without explanation her obligations with regard to the Black Sea under the treaty of Paris of 1850. Granville's protests were unanswerable, but Prince Gortschakoff, knowing that England would not interfere by force, was indifferent to diplomatic arguments. Under Granville's auspices the conference of London met in January 1871, and formally denied in general, while practically affirming in particular, the right of Russia to act as she had done. When, in 1872, he came to negotiate the renewal of the commercial treaty with France he found the French goremment unconciliatory. The United States government, too, had seized the opportunity to press for a settlement of the various claims arising out of the depredations of the Alabama and the outstanding fisheries questions. Granville, for the sake of peace, submitted to very great concessions. The treaty of Washington was signed on 8 May 1871, and in the subsequent Geneva arbitration claims were admitted by the arbitrators, and eventually under their award paid by the government of Great Britain, which largely exceeded the damages fairly traceable to the Alabama cruiser. In the management of Central Asian questions his policy was equally hampered by the impossibility of effective resistance. In 1871 he arranged with Prince Gortschakoff for the maintenance of an intermediate zone in Central Asia between the then Russian frontier and Afghanistan. But when, in 1873, Russia occupied — permanently, as it proved — Khiva within the neutral rone, he had to accept Count Schouvaloff's assurances that the advance was temporary.
Granville's foreign policy was not found in the election of 1874 to have added strength to the liberal party. During six years of opposition be contented himself, as leader of his party in the House of Lords, with
